As U.S. naval forces further develop and implement distributed maritime operations concepts to address great power competition with Russia and China, more ships spread across wider distances will be required. This, in turn, will lead to a changing fleet composition with larger numbers of small ships and vessels of all types, as well as provide the additional required logistical support over expanded distances. Far greater participation of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) of all types will be needed as a part of this new construct due to budgetary necessity and operational imperative.

While new unmanned ships, such as those planned under the Medium USV and Large USV programs, are expected to be fielded in the dozens, smaller unmanned vessels and craft numbering in the hundreds can play vital complimentary rolls. Already, the Navy has USV programs underway that will help remove humans from dangerous operational environments, such as minefields. Additionally, concepts are under development for similar platforms to extend the fleet’s reach through a range of networked sensors and weapons.

The quickest, best value, and lowest risk path forward to developing long-term solutions for new missions is to adapt existing, proven, and already paid-for unmanned vehicle designs by swapping out their mission-specific equipment. The idea is to use a common unmanned vessel that can easily and quickly incorporate a variety of payloads for diverse mission sets, or haul people and material in the payload bay area.

In the case of the Textron Systems’ Common Unmanned Surface Vehicle (CUSV), which was selected under competition as the platform for the Navy’s Unmanned Influence Sweep System (UISS) program, payloads are rapidly interchangeable. Much like a standard International Standards Organization (ISO) shipping container that can be quickly moved via crane onto and off of a tractor trailer, the CUSV uses ISO locks and standard electrical interfaces so that payloads can be changed rapidly, allowing mission flexibility. Unmanned craft such as the CUSV, which offer large amounts of electrical power as well as 5,000 pounds of payload capacity, can serve as the basic “trucks” for carrying a wide variety of potential mission packages that are tailored for specific tasks.

New Missions: Endless Possibilities

To date, naval plans for such USVs have been limited to the mine-countermeasures (MCM) mission areas, with the UISS initially intended for mine-sweeping. With that program being subsumed into the MCM USV program, mine-hunting payload options are being added and mine-neutralization equipment is being envisioned, which would facilitate the entire detect-to-engage process in a single MCM sortie.

While taking the man out of the naval minefield was a natural first mission to address, U.S. naval forces have only begun to scratch the surface of what USVs of all sizes can accomplish. In 2017, Textron Systems and the Naval Surface Warfare Center-Dahlgren established a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), which allows for the exploration of advanced missions, concepts, and capabilities. Initial explorations have evaluated different payloads for a Surface and Expeditionary Warfare Mission Module that could counter fast-attack craft and swarming boats, as well as provide armed escort. Payloads, such as an integrated remote weapon station (RWS) armed with .50 caliber machine gun, have already shown during mock intercepts that the craft can identify, lock, and maintain a fix on a moving target. Integration of a Hellfire missile is planned, and other lethal payloads such a 30mm cannon, low-cost loitering munition, or even larger systems like the Naval Strike Missile, could be considered.

Such capabilities would allow the USV to support a wide array of missions. For example, a USV carrying a mix of armament, such as .50 cal RWS, combined with non-lethal capabilities would give operators a range of engagement escalation options during the conduct of harbor patrol, port security, or counter-piracy escort duties. For more stressing force protection, armed interdiction and escort missions, those payloads could be exchanged for a launcher carrying Hellfire missile or other armaments.

The craft does not need to carry a mission package to be useful. Its empty payload areas can haul cargo for resupply and logistics – a capability that will be in greater demand as part of distributed operations. Similarly, a USV in “cargo configuration” could be of significant utility during humanitarian operations, delivering supplies to needy areas, and evacuation of people under duress.

With significant excess onboard power and substantial available space and weight, such USVs could also be equipped to conduct electronic warfare; pull an anti-submarine warfare sensor array; host intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance sensors; or carry a communications relay payload. This is just the beginning of exploring the art of the possible. The best way to quickly determine the most promising technologies and concepts is to get a number of the craft into the water for experimentation.

Not Just for Littoral Combat Ship (LCS)

Consideration needs to be given regarding how a CUSV-sized craft can support a variety of new roles and missions. Although the MCM USV program envisions the craft as being initially operated from the LCS, recent demonstrations have shown such USVs are not limited to just that class. In fact, the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Ship Mounts Bay successfully operated the CUSV during a recent naval experiment. The USV can also been deployed off the shore, as well as from additional platforms which have a crane or wet dock. For example, the CUSV has demonstrated this concept operating off the Expeditionary Transfer Dock USNS John Glenn.

While a forward operating base or mothership is needed for the craft of this size to be forward deployed, several options are worth considering. Depending on the specific mission profile, such craft typically operate for approximately eight-hour sorties between refueling. Additionally, refueling does not need to be provided by specific manned ships, but could instead come from a wider variety of places. Imagine, for example, a future destroyer escorted by 10 to 20 armed USVs operating as part of a distributed operating concept. Each of those USVs could, in turn, be a mothership for additional smaller unmanned craft (unmanned aerial systems, unmanned underwater systems and USVs), that are netted together to create a truly layered defense. These smaller craft, if autonomously refueled, including by the larger medium and large USVs, could potentially stay on station for days, weeks, or even months without needing to return to port.

Ready Technology: Powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The basic building blocks of AI technology that will enable such operations already exist. USVs have demonstrated during naval experimentation that they are fully capable of autonomous navigation and seakeeping operations, collision avoidance, and International Regulations for Preventing Collision at Sea (COLREGs) compliance, and that evolution continues. At the upcoming Advanced Naval Technology Experiment (ANTX) at Camp Lejeune this summer, the CUSV will be put through its paces to demonstrate that these craft possess operational maturity in their ability for autonomous basic operations, as well as advanced concepts such the hand-off of control of the craft to another platform to test manned-unmanned teaming concepts.

Improvements and evolution of AI technology will add capabilities to these craft in many areas. It will help increase the level of autonomy in the craft such that it can be operated without need for human intervention in its basic movements and navigation. This will, in turn, reduce the operational burden on a craft operator and could lead to additional manpower reductions. While most missions will require one person to operate the vessel and another operator for the payload, decision tools enabled by AI could make a single operator feasible.

Consider, for example, how commercial companies like Waymo plan to use a controller to oversee a fleet of road vehicles. Future control technologies could also enable one operator to control multiple craft simultaneously, allowing their teammates to focus on the payload sensor or weapons. These control technologies do not have to be restricted to USVs. Textron Systems’ Synturian family of multi-domain control and collaboration technologies can control craft such as CUSV, as well as various unmanned aircraft systems, raising the possibility of seamless control for a multitude of different systems.

Advances in AI will also be vital in providing USVs with self-diagnostic technologies for predictive maintenance. Combined with increase component reliability, these technologies will enable craft to go longer between maintenance periods while more predictably knowing when that maintenance is needed. Such logistical schemes, in additional to autonomous refueling, are a key to the future ability of USVs to stay on station for longer durations.

Ramp Up Experimentation

Technological advances, fiscal pressures, and rising peer competitor capabilities suggest that the Navy must adapt its core warfighting strategies and concepts, and a changing fleet composition to one that uses unmanned platforms of all types and sizes to a greater degree. For all the excitement that USVs and the attenuate technologies bring, the details of how best to leverage those vessels are still in their infancy. Experience has repeatedly shown that the best way to generate and test new warfighting concepts ideas is through experimentation, specifically done at sea by Sailors themselves. Fortunately, the Navy has the Other Transactional Authorities (OTA) mechanism at its disposal, a ready-made and proven means to quickly procure prototypes for such experimentation while longer-term concepts and requirements are refined.

Specifically, getting USVs of all types into the hands of Sailors and planning for increased experimentation will provide insights into key questions such as which missions the various unmanned craft should undertake, and how those vessels best fit into the wider naval tactical and operational construct. Development of those new doctrines, strategies, and tactics is needed, and with rapidly developing technologies and capabilities of potential adversaries, we no longer have the luxury of time to go through the traditional, decade-long requirements and acquisition process just to get the first iteration of new systems to the fleet for experimentation.

While it is encouraging to see Navy plans to move quickly to bring initial Medium and Large USVs into the fleet, other unmanned platforms are equally ready for such an approach. Innovation is the key to shaping tomorrow’s Navy, and getting USVs of all shapes and sizes to the fleet for Sailors to try out is the best approach to achieving it.

Wayne Prender is Senior Vice President of Applied Technologies & Advanced Programs (ATAP), as well as a member of the Textron Systems Executive Leadership Team. Prior to assuming his current position, Prender served as Vice President, Control & Surface Systems for Textron Systems’ Unmanned Systems business, focusing on programs including the Common Unmanned Surface Vehicle (CUSV), Cased Telescoped (CT) weapons and ammunition, and Command and Control (C2) Technology programs. He also served in the U.S. Army as a Platoon Leader, Shop Officer, Battalion Intelligence Officer in Iraq, where he was awarded the Bronze Star, and Aide-de-Camp for the Commanding General of the U.S. Army’s 20th Support Command (CBRNE). Prender holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from St. Louis University, and a Master of Science degree in Technology Management and an MBA from the University of Maryland (UMUC).

After almost two decades of languishing in near-obscurity while U.S. Marine Corps forces were engaged in ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps amphibious assault force is experiencing a revival. The reason is clear: this warfighting formation is the one that is most vital in a wide-array of missions across the globe and across the spectrum of conflict. This has been true throughout this history of the Navy-Marine Corps team, and is perhaps more true today as the United States faces a new spectrum of threats from peer-competitors, to unstable rogue states, to the threat of global terrorism.

While today’s Navy-Marine Corps amphibious assault force is unlikely to conduct a major, brigade-level amphibious offensive involving thousands of troops, the ability to put a substantial number of Marines and gear ashore in response to terrorist activity, a natural disaster, or to deliver credible combat power for a higher-end fight is something the U.S. military must be prepared to do. Indeed, as the Director of National Intelligence capstone publication, Global Trends: Paradox of Progress, notes, “The chance of conflict in the next five years has never been higher.”1 U.S. Marines will likely be in any conflict engaged in by this nation.

Most people – and even many naval professionals – have only a rudimentary understanding of the complexities of amphibious operations. Unlike armies that move supplies over land with an armada of trucks and other vehicles, everything that Marines need when they land on the beach must travel with them in a variety of amphibious assault vehicles and landing craft, often in the face of well-entrenched enemy fire.

But that is only half the story. Once the Marines – who are equipped with only what they can carry in their pack – are on the beach and in the fight, everything they need to keep fighting must be delivered to them from the amphibious assault ships standing offshore. This includes ammunition (and lots of it), food, water, medical support, fuel for vehicles, and every other item imaginable.

The name for this resupply effort is logistics. This military art has been a mainstay of warfare for millennia. As Alexander the Great famously said, “My logisticians are a humorless lot…they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay.” Over 2,300 years later, logistics is still vital to any military operation, and of all the U.S. military services, the U.S. Marine Corps is the one that is defining and refining this art.

The Navy-Marine Corps Team: Leading the Way in the Military Art of Logistics

Almost four decades ago, General Robert Barrow, USMC, Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, coined a phrase that is still a staple of U.S. War College curricula, “Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics.” Today, that emphasis on logistics is ingrained in U.S. Marine Corps DNA. As Brigadier General Arthur Pasagian, USMC, Commander, Marine Corps Systems Command, noted at a recent symposium, “Logistics is a key enabler for all we do.”2 The Marine Corps has refined this logistics ability to a fine art and is seeking new technology to enable it to better perform this mission.

Partnering with the U.S. Marine Corps in delivering capability from the sea, the U.S. Navy provides the ships and the craft to bring logistics supplies ashore to support Marines on the beach. This teamwork was emphasized in the U.S. Navy’s strategic guidance, Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority 2.0 (Design 2.0) which calls for, “Deepening integration with our natural partner, the U.S. Marine Corps.”3

The Navy-Marine Corps team has risen to this challenge by being proactive in exploring new technologies to increase the lethality of the nation’s amphibious assault forces in a series of exercises, experiments, and demonstrations. During the author’s years on a numbered fleet warfighter’s staff, he had the opportunity to observe a number of carrier strike group and expeditionary strike group exercises. These included a recent exercise, the INDOPACOM Joint Exercise Valiant Shield 2018, overseen by Commander Marine Forces Pacific (MARFORPAC) and conducted on the Marianas Island Range Complex as well as on the island of Guam, where new logistics concepts were explored.

Valiant Shield: Leveraging New Technology to Support Marines on the Beach

While recent exercises such as Bold Alligator and a series of Advanced Naval Technology Exercise (ANTX) events have looked at a wide range of technologies that could make expeditionary assault forces more lethal, agile, and survivable, others have looked at more discrete missions conducted by the Navy-Marine Corps team. Valiant Shield 2018 looked to use emerging technology – often off-the-shelf equipment – to support Marines on the beachhead during this critical juncture of any amphibious assault. To this end, a significant part of this exercise focused on logistics.

While many functions are important in an amphibious assault, once the assault is underway and Marines are on the beach, logistics is the critical factor in ensuring their success. The operation will often only succeed if the Marines are able to have rapid, reliable, and continuous resupply. Using manned naval craft to do this puts operators and vessels at unnecessary risk. Furthermore, using scarce manned craft to perform this mission takes them away from more vital roles. That is why this major Navy-Marine Corps amphibious exercise evaluated the ability of unmanned surface vehicles to conduct this resupply mission.

During Valiant Shield 2018, MARFORPAC demonstrated the ability to have unmanned surface vehicles resupply the landing force. The amphibious force commander used a 12-foot MANTAS USV to provide rapid ship-to-shore logistics resupply. While this small, remotely operated, USV carried only one hundred and twenty pounds of cargo; the proof-of-concept worked and successfully demonstrated that unmanned surface vehicles could safely and effectively resupply Marines ashore.

Using unmanned vehicles, either controlled by operators or programmed to follow a prescribed course, could be a game-changer for amphibious assault forces. Beyond taking operators out of harm’s way, using USVs for this mission frees manned craft for other missions. Additionally, having a continuous, preprogrammed, logistics resupply process to perform one of the dull, dirty, and dangerous functions important in an amphibious assault enables the commander to focus on other warfighting tasks in the heat of battle.

While the proof-of-concept with a 12-foot MANTAS USV was successful and received positive reviews from Commander Marine Forces Pacific logistics staff personnel, resupply in 120-pound increments is not the total solution to the enormous logistics requirements of even a squad of Marines ashore. Much more is needed. For this reason, the maker of the MANTAS family of USVs was asked by the Navy and Marine Corps to scale-up the 12-foot USV and develop a larger proof-of-concept unmanned surface vehicle for this mission.

MANTAS USV being lowered for launch from a U.S. Navy ship. (Photo courtesy of MARTAC)

Plans for larger MANTAS unmanned surface vehicles, ranging from 38-foot to 50-foot long, are on the drawing board for further review by Navy and Marine Corps officials. While this may not be the ultimate size for the USV the expeditionary assault force needs as a long-term solution, it will go a long way to advancing the state-of-the-art in providing for the substantial logistics needs of Marines on the beach.

Developing a Robust Unmanned Logistics Resupply Capability

The promising unmanned logistics resupply results demonstrated during Joint Exercise Valiant Shield can open up new possibilities to support Marines on the beach with continuous, reliable resupply using unmanned surface vehicles. While there are numerous designs for unmanned surface vehicles, for the amphibious resupply mission, a shallow-draft USV would best fit the mission profile. Additionally, since the near-shore surf zone is an inherently unstable environment, the stability conferred by a catamaran hull is beneficial to ensure that the resupply craft can safely reach the beach.

One such shallow-draft catamaran hull vessel is the 38-foot MANTAS (T38) USV. This craft is the next step up to provide a steady, continuous stream of logistics support to Marines on the beach. The T38 USV can travel at a cruise speed of 25 knots with a burst speed of 80 knots, weighs 6,500 pounds, and draws just 18 inches of draft. The T38 has the ability to carry a payload up to 4,500 pounds. Given the speed and carrying capacity of the T38-sized USV, it is readily apparent how it can fulfill logistics functions in amphibious operations.

MANTAS USV begins high speed run from amphibious flotilla to the beach. (Photo courtesy of MARTAC)

There are a wide array of forthcoming amphibious exercises in the years ahead such as additional Valiant Shield and Valiant Blitz events, yearly Bold Alligator exercises, Sea Dragon, RIMPAC and additional Advanced Technology Exercises (ANTX). Continuing to refine the ability of successively larger unmanned surface vessels to resupply Marines on the beach and in the fight should be woven into these events. Indeed, as Vice Admiral William Merz, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Warfare Systems recently noted, “We have a lot to learn about unmanned surface vessels.”[4] Advancing the art of resupply of Marines on the beach is one sure way to accelerate this learning curve.

Great Concept, But What Would It Look Like?

When the author served on a numbered fleet warfighter’s staff they looked at a great many new technologies that could potentially help Sailors and Marines. The commanders always insisted that the staff come up with a CONOPS – a concept of operations – before embracing a new technology. In other words, we were tasked to demonstrate what this technology would accomplish operationally, that is, what an operation would look like if this technology was in the Fleet today. Rear Admiral Ronald Boxall, the Navy’s Director of Surface Warfare on the CNO staff, said as much at the recent SNA Symposium where he noted:

“We are going to design unmanned platforms with that we we’re going to put people on them in the near term. Then we will move toward fully unmanned when we think the technology and understanding of how to use them matures [emphasis added].”5

Keeping CONOPs development in mind, some back-of-the-envelope math can help understand what an expeditionary strike group equipped with a number of T38s could do to resupply Marines on the beach.

An ESG typically stands no more than 15-25 nautical miles off the beach being assaulted. Using a notional stand-off distance of 20 nautical miles, an ESG equipped with four T38s traveling at their cruise speed of 25 knots could deliver 18,000 pounds of material from the ESG to the beach per hour, allowing the short time needed for loading and unloading the craft. Multiply that by twenty-four hours and you get a buildup of well-over 400,000 pounds of vital material per day, enough to support a substantial force of Marines ashore. One can also consider retrograde or bringing injured personnel from shore to ship.

The U.S. Navy is making an enormous commitment to unmanned systems – especially unmanned surface systems. For example, the Navy is considering establishing a “Surface Development Squadron,” to experiment with unmanned ships.6 Future development ideas call for a “Ghost Fleet” of autonomous unmanned surface ships that could operate against an enemy force without putting sailors in harm’s way.7

As an interim step, however, Navy officials envision operating these potentially unmanned ships with human crews until the technology matures.8 More recently, as reported in April of this year in USNI News, the Navy announced its intention to spend $2.7B into researching and buying ten large unmanned surface ships over the next five years as part of an overall plan to buy 232 unmanned surface, underwater, and aerial vehicles of all sizes over the next five years.9

These plans are laudable – and ambitious – and may eventually reach fruition. But the Navy would be better served by embracing the always successful “crawl, walk, run,” method and use commercial off-the-shelf technology to evolve an already proven logistics capability before committing to ambitious plans with unmanned surface ships that aren’t yet on the drawing boards. Far from distracting Navy officials from these more lofty ideas for using unmanned systems, demonstrating this capability in Navy-Marine Corps exercises would likely accelerate the Navy’s embrace of unmanned systems.

Conclusion

The need for continuous logistics resupply for Marines on the beach will not disappear in any future warfighting scenario. This was true 2,500 years ago when Sun Tzu noted, “The line between disorder and order lies in logistics,” and this same emphasis on logistics is embodied today in U.S. military doctrine, with Joint Pub 1: Joint Warfare of the Armed Forces noting, “Logistics sets the campaign’s operational limits.”10 Demonstrating how unmanned surface vehicles such as the MANTAS T38 can rapidly and reliably resupply Marines on the beach should be a Navy-Marine Corps priority.

Neil Zerbe is a retired Naval Officer and F-14 aircraft carrier aviator. As a former, frontline, technology “end user,” Neil remains tightly connected with DoD organizations to understand emerging technology requirements. Neil provides industry marketing support to companies with new, innovative, emerging technology who are seeking to find the right interested parties whether that be DoD/USG or other aerospace and defense industry partners seeking such technology to support their offerings.

The United States has entered an era of great power competition against peer adversaries who are seeking to shape the world to their needs and upset the global international order.1 This challenge is addressed in the highest levels of U.S. policy documents, from Global Trends: Paradox of Progress, to the National Security Strategy, to the National Defense Strategy. Indeed, the National Defense Strategy explicitly calls for the United States to “Build a More Lethal Force” to deal with these threats.”2

The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are critical components of this more lethal force. As the Navy’s Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority 2.0 (Design 2.0) notes, “The U.S. Navy must be ready to conduct prompt and sustained combat incident to operations at sea.” Design 2.0also calls for “Deepening integration with our natural partner, the U.S. Marine Corps.”3 As Brigadier General Christian Wortman, Commanding Officer of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, noted at the recent USNI/AFCEA West Symposium “We are back and completely integrated with the Navy.”4

This call for enhanced Navy-Marine Corps integration comes at a time when, in the words of a former Marine Commandant, “The Marine Corps is returning to its amphibious roots,”5 and when the demand for amphibious forces is at a high level. As Ryan Hilger noted in his recent CIMSEC article, “Ground Component Commanders (GCCs) continue to signal a demand for amphibious forces, reaching high enough to justify 40 amphibious ships required to meet requested presence requirements.”6

This sea change in U.S. strategic focus comes at a time of accelerating technological change. As Michelle Flournoy, former undersecretary of defense for policy, noted recently, “We are in the most intense technological revolution the world has ever seen.”7 Today, one of the most rapidly growing areas of innovative technology adoption by the U.S. military involves unmanned systems. In the past several decades, the U.S. military’s use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has increased from only a handful to more than 10,000, while the use of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) has exploded from zero to more than 12,000.

The use of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) and unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) is also growing, as USVs and UUVs are proving to be increasingly useful for a wide array of military applications. The expanding use of military unmanned systems (UxS) is already creating strategic, operational, and tactical possibilities that did not exist a decade ago.

America’s Amphibious Assault Forces: Leading a Paradigm Shift

Last summer, the Smithsonian Channel featured a series, “The Pacific War in Color.” One part of this program told the story of amphibious assaults on Japanese-held islands, such as Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Tarawa, Peleliu, and others. These assaults involved armadas of amphibious ships and hundreds of landing craft that were part of each forcible entry operation. In each case, the attacking force faced significant opposition getting Marines onto the beach.

Aerial raw footage of the 1945 Iwo Jima landings (Romano Archives)

In the post-Cold War era, amphibious assault forces have not been the most capable part of the U.S. Navy. In the years after 9/11—while the Marine Corps was engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan and not primarily embarked on amphibious ships—the amphibious assault fleet was, at best, an afterthought. Today, as the United States faces a plethora of threats across the globe, there is a new emphasis on amphibious warfare.

According to Lieutenant General David Berger, commander of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command, and nominee to be the next Commandant of the Marine Corps, “We need to be prepared for large-scale amphibious operations. We might do it differently in the future, but we can’t ignore it.”8

For decades, when a crisis emerged anywhere on the globe, the first question a U.S. president often asked was, “Where are the carriers?” Today, that question is still asked, but increasingly, it has morphed into, “Where are the expeditionary strike groups?” The reason is clear. These naval expeditionary formations—built around a large-deck amphibious assault ship, an amphibious transport dock, and a dock landing ship—have been the ones used extensively for a wide array of missions short of war, from anti-piracy patrols, to personnel evacuation, to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. And where tensions lead to hostilities, these forces are the only ones that give the U.S. military a forcible entry option.

U.S. naval expeditionary forces have remained relatively robust even as the size of the Navy has shrunk from a high of 594 ships in 1987 to 272 ships in 2018. Naval expeditionary strike groups comprise a substantial percentage of the current fleet. Indeed, the blueprint for the future fleet the Navy is building, as seen in a recent Congressional Research Service report, maintains—and even increases—that percentage.9

“While forcible entry operations are often thought of exclusively in terms of initiating a continental campaign, an application some analysts assume to be unlikely, it may be more probable in the 21st century that they are conducted as part of a joint campaign that is maritime in character. It ought to be self-evident from looking at a map that military competition in the near seas will involve an amphibious component—to include amphibious assault when and where required.”

The Gazette article goes on to note that “a film about a modern amphibious operation would likely be boring, as there would be no dramatic scenes of large units fighting their way across a heavily defended beach.”10

Navy and Marine Corps expeditionary forces have been proactive in looking to affordable new technology to add capability to their existing and future ships. One of the technologies that offers the most promise in this regard is unmanned systems. These unmanned systems can reduce the risk to human life in high-threat areas, deliver persistent surveillance over areas of interest, and provide options to warfighters—particularly given their ability to operate autonomously.

The U.S. Navy’s commitment to unmanned systems is seen in the Navy’s Force Structure Assessment, as well as in a series of Future Fleet Architecture Studies. In each of these studies—one by the CNO staff, one by the MITRE Corporation, and one by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments—the proposed future fleet architecture featured large numbers of air, surface, and subsurface unmanned systems.11 These reports highlight the fact that the attributes unmanned systems can bring to the U.S. Navy Fleet circa 2030 have the potential to be transformational.

One of the major challenges to the Navy and Marine Corps to making a substantial commitment to unmanned maritime systems is the fact that they are relatively new and their development has been under the radar for all but a few professionals in the research and development, requirements, and acquisition communities. That is now changing. The Department of Defense 2017-2037 Unmanned Systems Roadmap highlights a large number of Navy and Marine Corps unmanned systems, particularly unmanned maritime systems (USVs and UUVs).12

Design 2.0 has clearly articulated the importance of unmanned systems to the Navy and Marine Corps future warfighting effectiveness. The publication’s “Line of Effort Green: Achieve High Velocity Outcomes,” demonstrates the Navy’s commitment to making unmanned systems a key component of the future fleet, highlighting air, surface and subsurface unmanned systems.13 Additionally, this commitment to unmanned systems programs is reflected in program documents such as the 2018 Navy Program Guide and the 2018 Marine Corps Concepts and Programs.

The Navy and Marine Corps have taken the lead in orchestrating an unprecedented number of exercises, experiments, and demonstrations to introduce new, cutting edge technologies—especially unmanned maritime systems—into the Fleet and Fleet Marine Forces. Many of these technologies are mature commercial off-the-shelf systems that are currently being used for other military and commercial applications. These events have put new technology directly into the hands of Sailors and Marines and have accelerated the amphibious force renaissance.

Testing and Evaluating Unmanned Systems

During the recent USNI/AFCEA “West” Symposium, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson noted, “Our strategic Achilles Heel is our inability to get new technology into the hands of our warfighters fast enough.”14 This is especially true with emerging technologies that are revolutionary—not merely evolutionary.

As with many novel naval technologies: ironclads, submarines, aircraft, nuclear power, directed-energy weapons, as well as others, is it typically not the most prominent communities where this experimentation takes place, but rather, in those parts of the Navy and Marine Corps that have traditionally been out of the spotlight and who need a technology boost. Today, it is the amphibious assault Navy that has been notably proactive in experimenting with emerging unmanned systems.

The Navy and Marine Corps have a number of ways to test and evaluate unmanned maritime systems. While some of this testing and evaluating—especially in the early stages of unmanned maritime systems development—occurs at industry facilities or at U.S. Navy laboratories, once these systems are more mature, they are fielded in a wide-array of Navy and Marine Corps events in the operational environment where they will ultimately be used. Brigadier General Wortman emphasized this point during the USNI/AFCEA Wes” Symposium where he noted, “We need to do more Fleet and MEF level exercises.”15

As the Department of the Navy has become increasingly interested in unmanned maritime systems, this testing and evaluating has accelerated in a number of exercises, experiments and demonstrations, such as the Ship-to-Shore Maneuver Exploration and Experimentation (S2ME2) Advanced Naval Technology Exercise (ANTX), the Surface Warfare Distributed Lethality in the Littoral Demonstration, and the Navy-Marine Corps Bold Alligator series of exercises.

The Ship-to-Shore Maneuver Exploration and Experimentation Advanced Naval Technology Exercise is a prime example of the Department of the Navy’s push to test and evaluate unmanned maritime systems. S2ME2 ANTX was especially important to the Navy and Marine Corps as the amphibious ship-to-shore mission is one of the most challenging tasks the military must undertake.

Due to the enormous stakes involved in putting troops ashore in the face of a prepared enemy force, S2ME2 ANTX had a heavy focus on unmanned systems—especially unmanned surface systems—that could provide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) as well as intelligence preparation of the battlespace (IPB). These are critical missions that have been traditionally been done by Sailors, Marines, and Special Operators, but ones that put these warfighters at extreme risk.

There is growing realization of the need to insert new technology to make the amphibious assault force more effective in the face of robust adversary defenses. In an address at the 2018 Surface Navy Association Symposium, Marine Corps Major General David Coffman, Director of Expeditionary Warfare (OPNAV N95), noted the need to make U.S. Navy amphibious ships, “More viable, lethal and survivable, with a focus on command, control, communications, computers, cyber and intelligence (C5I).”16 Clearly, the ISR and IPB missions depend on these capabilities, and it is unmanned systems that can provide this function without hazarding personnel.

During the S2ME2 ANTX the amphibious assault force proactively employed an unmanned surface vehicle to thwart enemy defenses. A MANTAS USV (an eight-foot version of a family of stealthy, low profile, USVs) swam into the “enemy” harbor (the Del Mar Boat Basin on the Southern California coast), and relayed information in real-time to the amphibious force command center using its TASKER C2 system. Subsequent to this ISR mission, the MANTAS USV was driven to the surf zone to provide IPB on water conditions, beach gradient, obstacle location and other information crucial to planners prior to a manned assault.

Carly Jackson, Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific’s Director of Prototyping for Information Warfare and one of the organizers of S2ME2 ANTX, explained the key element of the exercise was to demonstrate new technology developed in rapid response to real world problems facing the fleet and noted that the exercise was focused on unmanned systems with a big emphasis on intelligence gathering, surveillance, and reconnaissance.17

In many ways, S2ME2 ANTX was a precursor to Bold Alligator, the Navy-Marine Corps exercise designed to enhance interoperability in the littorals. Bold Alligator was a live, scenario-driven exercise designed to demonstrate maritime and amphibious force capabilities. The 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade (MEB) led the exercise and operated from dock landing ships USS Fort McHenry (LSD-43) and USS Gunston Hall (LSD-44); amphibious transport dock USS Arlington (LPD-24).18

Bold Alligator took the concepts explored during S2ME2 ANTX to the next level, employing two different size (six-foot and twelve-foot) MANTAS USVs in the ISR and IPB roles to provide comprehensive reconnaissance of beaches and waterways. These systems were employed during the Long Range Littoral Reconnaissance phase of the exercise.

The 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade used the larger (twelve-foot) MANTAS USV, equipped with a Gyro Stabilized SeaFLIR230 EO/IR Camera and a BlueView M900 Forward Looking Imaging Sonar to provide ISR and IPB for the amphibious assault. This sonar was employed to provide bottom imaging and analysis within the surf zone of the amphibious landing area. This latter capability is crucial in amphibious operations in order to ensure that a landing craft can successfully enter the surf zone without encountering mines or other objects.

While S2ME2 was confined to a relatively constrained operating area off the coast of Southern California, Bold Alligator was played out over a wide geographic area. This included a Command Center at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, and operating units employing forces in a wide area of the Atlantic Ocean, North and South Onslow Beach, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, as well as in the Intracoastal Waterway near Camp Lejeune.

During the Long Range Littoral Reconnaissance phase of Bold Alligator, Navy and Marine Corps operators at Naval Station Norfolk were able to remotely control both the six-foot and twelve-foot MANTAS USVs and drive them off North and South Onslow Beaches as well as in the Intracoastal Waterway. Once positioned, both MANTAS USVs streamed live, high-resolution video and sonar images to the command center at Naval Station Norfolk several hundred miles away.

The latter capability is crucial in amphibious operations in order to ensure that a landing or other craft could successfully navigate a waterway or enter the surf zone without encountering mines or other objects. Clearing a path for LCACs or LCUs to safely pass through the surf zone and onto the beach during an assault is a make-or-break factor for any amphibious operation. Having the ability to view these images in real-time enables decision makers not on-scene to make time-critical go/no go determinations. The value of providing commanders with real-time ISR and IPB is difficult to overstate, and it is likely that this capability will continue to be examined in other expeditionary exercises going forward.

Sustaining the Amphibious Assault Force Renaissance

The ship-to-shore movement of an expeditionary assault force was—and remains—the most hazardous mission for any navy. The value of real-time ISR and IPB is difficult to overstate. It is this ability to sense the battlespace in real time that will spell the difference between victory and defeat.

For this reason, it seems clear that the types of unmanned systems the Department of the Navy should acquire are those systems that directly support naval expeditionary forces that conduct forcible entry operations. This suggests a need for unmanned surface systems to complement our expeditionary naval formations represented by the amphibious assault navy. These commercial off-the-shelf technologies are available today and the Department of the Navy would be well-served to put them into the hands of warfighters now.

Captain George Galdorisi (USN – retired) is a career naval aviator whose thirty years of active duty service included four command tours and five years as a carrier strike group chief of staff. He began his writing career in 1978 with an article in U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings. He is the Director of Strategic Assessments and Technical Futures at the Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific in San Diego, California.

The views presented are those of the author, and do not reflect the views of the Department of the Navy or Department of Defense.

As the U.S. Navy shifts to reprioritize great power competition in line with the 2018 National Defense Strategy, close-in missile defense has taken on new importance. It is estimated the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force, the branch of the Chinese military equipped with short, medium, and long-range ballistic and cruise missiles has an arsenal ofthousands of missiles. As of yet, only the more recent classes are known to have guidance for striking maritime targets, but that may change. In addition, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has surface vessels of all sizes with hundreds more anti-ship missiles. At the low end is theType 22 missile boat with eight missiles, and at the high end is the new Type 055 with 112 vertical launch cells that can be loaded with a variety of ordnance. These new PLAN missile capabilities has produced palpable anxiety in the US defense establishment. Last week in a confirmation hearingfor the future Commandant of the Marine Corps and Chief of Naval Operations, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) asked how the Navy was planning on dealing with the “great risk” to their surface fleet. He was not the only Senator to voice his concern.

Though anti-ship missiles have not yet been used in in large-scale fleet combat, they have been used to deadly effect by aircraft and smaller surface combatants after their debut in the Yom Kippur War. All previous incidents also occurred in coastal or littoral waters. By all accounts, if and when large-scale, salvo-type fleet combat does occur, it will cause damage unseen since the large naval battles of the Second World War. In fact, there is perhaps no precedent for the destructive capacity of missile volleys except for the large-scale kamikaze attacks on the U.S. naval force during the battle of Okinawa.1 During the battle, hundreds of kamikazes were deployed and sunk over forty U.S. warships.2 Okinawa remains one of the costliest battles for the U.S. Navy in any conflict.

Kamikaze employment and tactics mirror what missiles salvos could look like today. The kamikazes were often based at austere airfields considered unsuitable for conventional operations, making them harder to identify by U.S. forces while also being low cost compared to the damage they could inflict.3 Toward the end of the war kamikaze pilots had mastered the use of terrain to mask their approach on U.S. radars – similar to low-level or sea-skimming flight in missiles today. They would approach from different directions and rapidly converge on suitable targets in waves as large as 300, maneuvering erratically to avoid anti-aircraft fire.4 Consider this description of a kamikaze attack on U.S. ships during the Battle of Okinawa from Robert C. Stern’s book Fire from the Sky:

“The enemy stayed low over the horizon to the west, out of sight of our radars and CAP… For a minute or two, every plane maneuvered for position in all quadrants and then, obviously on signal, a coordinated attack was launched.”5

It has even been argued by naval historian D.M. Giangreco, that just before the end of the war the Japanese discovered that their wooden training planes didn’t show up on U.S. radars – they were essentially stealth weapons.6 Regardless, the Japanese thought the kamikaze squadrons were effective enough that they prepared the bulk of their remaining aircraft – some 10,500 – for kamikaze operations against any future U.S. landing on the Japanese home islands.7

The U.S. Navy responded to this threat with three main approaches. They expanded fleet formations and used destroyers and combat air patrols as pickets – often posting pickets as far as seventy-five miles out from the ships they were protecting. The Navy also employed new technology like radars and proximity-fuzed munitions, and massively proliferated anti-aircraft weapons across its ships.8 According to figures from Giangreco:

“By June 30, 1945, 2,381 twin mounts had been installed on Navy ships in the Pacific, and 10,180 single mounts remained throughout the fleet. The numbers of quad, double and single 40-mm mounts stood at 1,585, 3,045 and 510 respectively.”9

And he goes on to note that despite this massive proliferation of point defense weapons, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Ernest King still considered his ships under-protected.

A Japanese Kamikaze attack on the USS Essex (CV-9) on 25 November 1944.

Together, these three lines of effort blunted the effectiveness of kamikaze attacks and helped defend the carriers and amphibious ships, but at a huge cost to the pickets, and even then, the defense was not impenetrable. Of the 41 ships sunk or damaged beyond repair in the Battle of Okinawa over half were destroyers or other escorts on picket duty and a further ten were minesweepers that had been sent to the picket role because of the high losses the pickets sustained.10 The pickets were effective, but at a huge cost to their crews. This response to kamikaze attacks provides a model for a response to the looming threat of anti-ship missiles. It is the best example of the U.S. Navy enduring a period of heavy and continuous missile salvo-like attacks in support of operations ashore.

“…We need to get after [unmanned surface vehicles] so the we can experiment with these to test out the concepts that we believe they are capable of doing, looking at different types of capabilities to put on different types of these vessels…”

But overall, he expressed confidence that they could be the way forward for the surface fleet:

“Down the road if these capabilities prove out to be as effective as some other current manned capabilities then they would start to add to and compliment the manned platforms we have and be part of our battle force.”

In addition to ongoing ASW experiments, another beneficial use would be to mount one or more close-in weapons systems (CIWS) on the MUSV and have them act as pickets for other ships in the fleet. The Phalanx CIWS currently mounted on many U.S. ships is already completely autonomous. It fires a twenty-millimeter cannon at targets based on pre-programed parameters. These new pickets would be completely autonomous and require only human intervention for reloading, refueling, and maintenance. Originally intended as a long-endurance submarine hunter, the Sea Hunter platform would be ideal for picket duty. Autonomous pickets could accompany high-priority ships like aircraft carriers or amphibious ships during strait transits and high-risk movements. They could also defend ship-to-shore movements and beachheads against missiles, aircraft and small surface vessels depending on their programming. These autonomous pickets could also act as surge defense for key naval installations and other key maritime terrain. The point-defense capability that CIWS can provide is also a gap ashore with the Marine Corps. The Phalanx CIWS is a capable and versatile weapon system far better than the twenty and forty-millimeter Bofors guns used against Japanese aircraft and can now be upgraded to carry Rolling Airframe Missiles (RAM) which significantly increase their interception range. It has also been used to protect ships against close flying aircraft, small boats, and drones, further proving its versatility.

Autonomous pickets are not limited to just kinetic weapons. They could integrate directed energy weapons into their defensive capabilities as well, perhaps in a triad with gun and missile point defenses. They would also be ideal platforms from which to deploy softkill countermeasures like chaff, electronic warfare, jamming. They could be mounted with multi-spectrum decoys imitating larger ships to draw anti-ship missiles toward themselves and away from higher-value manned platforms.

Mounting autonomous platforms with defensive systems for force protection side-steps the significant ethical question of lethal autonomous platforms because the precedent has already been set. The Navy has already deployed the autonomous defensive systems like CIWS and Aegis for decades and can modify the engagement parameters to fit any environment. Pursuing defensive, autonomous weapons for missile defense is a way to continue developing relevant and lethal weaponry without “taking the human out of the loop” for strike operations.

The biggest limitations of the weapons is their relatively short range – the twenty-millimeter cannons are limited to only a few thousand meters, and their limited magazine capacity. But both of these disadvantages can be offset by putting more of them on unmanned platforms further out from the fleet and mixing in missile, directed energy, and softkill countermeasures. Images of U.S. Navy ships late in the Second World War show ships that have anti-aircraft weapons on nearly every square meter of available deck space – and new classes of ships had even more gun mounts yet planned.

There is an inherent risk with the Navy’s classified new operational concept – Distributed Maritime Operations. Distributing combat power can reduce the ability of ships to mutually support each other and increases the risk to the force. More simply put – if vessels that are normally used to escort a carrier are sent farther away they have less of an ability to protect the carrier. The Navy can compensate for this by fielding autonomous picket ships – which are far cheaper than building more conventional vessels both in the initial purchase price and in sustainment costs because they have no crew. This type of lethal yet cheap and potentially sacrificial vessel is also what the Navy needs to compliment the new Littoral Combat Ships which have relatively poor organic defensive capability. USVs will prove key to operationalizing the DMO, and adding them to supplement the fleet precludes the need to add or upgrade the CIWS already mounted. Even a small number of autonomous pickets could be shared among the fleet – always protecting the most at risk assets, whether it be a capital ship, naval facility, or other key objective. Fortunately, there is evidence the Navy already understands the opportunity that is USVs. Defense News reported this week that the Navy has budgeted $2.7 billion for unmanned surface vessels over the next five years but that the Navy doesn’t know “…how it would introduce those technologies into a fleet that has for the most part fought the same way since the Cold War.” Autonomous pickets are one possible way.

Conclusion

In all cases, the ability to form a protective perimeter of unmanned systems beyond the edge of the fleet would significantly boost survivability and increase options for the fleet commander by lowering risk. A flotilla of autonomous pickets, armed with effective CIWS and multi-spectrum missile countermeasures, can function as a powerful yet affordable force multiplier. Such a force would provide the Navy with an increased ability to operate and project power inside an anti-access, area-denial (A2/AD) network and help the fleet weather storms of missile salvos. The methods of how the U.S. Navy adapted to the kamikaze threat in the Second World War provides an excellent case study for this concept and a strong argument for its implementation. As the Navy continues to experiment with new roles and missions for unmanned systems, unmanned force protection and missile defense is an ideal mission.

Walker D. Mills is an active duty Marine Corps infantry officer. He is currently studying Spanish at the Defense Language Institute in preparation for an exchange tour in Colombia. He has previously been deployed to the Western Pacific as part of the Marine Corps’ Unit Deployment Program. These views are presented in a personal capacity.